Lawrence police opted to escalate a vehicle stop to the point of threatening to use potentially lethal force (while endangering bystanders and other officers) rather than identify themselves, then violently arrested and refused to provide medical aid for the victim of their aggression.

While looking into the violent arrest of an 88 year old woman (an event the Pittsfield police say will taint their department's reputation for years) we accidentally discovered that the Pittsfield police had lost evidence in an unknown number of cases without telling anyone. We made Berkshire District Attorney David Capeless aware of the loss, but his office also failed to notify anyone.

The Supervisor of Records ripped a giant new hole in the records law by refusing to have the law enforced when the MBTA Transit Police illegally destroyed a video because “there are no other responsive records available.”

Broken Records is a column about public records access in Massachusetts. In this, our first, column we explore William Galvin's role in making a mess out of Massachusetts records access, and we discuss the push to to reform the law. We also look at the recent Boston Globe survey of town responses to records requests that found that Massachusetts is failing, which is exactly what all the other surveys found.

Chicopee Associate Solicitor, Thomas Rooke, uses a personal email account to dodge records requests. He then avoided complying with an order from Secretary of the Commonwealth William Galvin's office by applying for an extension even though those don't exist in the law (yet).

In a recent interview with The Boston Herald, Boston police Commissioner William Evans whined about people who record the police, even going so far as to call for a new law that would criminalize the act of recording a police officer while standing within a certain distance of them.

“If we can get legislation to make it fair, so it protects both sides, then I’m all for it,” Evans told the Herald. “Would I love to see a little distance? I'd love to see that.”

I'm glad Evans finally admits that the public needs legal protection when they record his officers. I've needed protection from the Boston police for years as they have threatened me with false arrests, with “physical removal” from a public building, and shoved me around. Actually, I don't really think that's what the commissioner meant.

Boston police officers once again failed to wear their badges or identify themselves at a public event, but this time one of the 23 top ranking department officials called the department’s “command staff” was on hand to step in. Sadly, when Deputy Superintendent William Ridge did involve himself in the incident, he joined in with his officers in their unlawful behavior and took it a step further by trying to intimidate me.

On July 4, the Boston police deployed outside of the Esplanade area where Boston’s Independence Day celebration is held. I was there to document the police checkpoints at the Esplanade itself, but on my way I noticed four Boston police officers standing in a doorway. Two of the rifle-toting cops were not displaying their badges, so I asked them to identify themselves. They refused. I then asked all of the officers to comply with the Massachusetts police ID card law that requires municipal police officers to carry and show a police ID upon lawful request. Three out of four of the officers refused and the fourth would only show his card to me off camera.

During a recent appearance on WGBH's program Boston Public Radio, Boston Police Commissioner William Evans was asked about reports that police at protests in Ferguson, Missouri were using black tape to cover up their names to conceal their identities. Evans agreed with host Margery Eagan that it was unlikely such a thing would ever take place in Boston.

While looking into the violent arrest of an 88 year old woman (an event the Pittsfield police say will taint their department's reputation for years) we accidentally discovered that the Pittsfield police had lost evidence in an unknown number of cases without telling anyone. We made Berkshire District Attorney David Capeless aware of the loss, but his office also failed to notify anyone.

Boston police officers once again failed to wear their badges or identify themselves at a public event, but this time one of the 23 top ranking department officials called the department’s “command staff” was on hand to step in. Sadly, when Deputy Superintendent William Ridge did involve himself in the incident, he joined in with his officers in their unlawful behavior and took it a step further by trying to intimidate me.

On July 4, the Boston police deployed outside of the Esplanade area where Boston’s Independence Day celebration is held. I was there to document the police checkpoints at the Esplanade itself, but on my way I noticed four Boston police officers standing in a doorway. Two of the rifle-toting cops were not displaying their badges, so I asked them to identify themselves. They refused. I then asked all of the officers to comply with the Massachusetts police ID card law that requires municipal police officers to carry and show a police ID upon lawful request. Three out of four of the officers refused and the fourth would only show his card to me off camera.

Officer Blake Holt of the Braintree Police Department is at it again. We can now add the New Year’s Eve takedown of Jeramie Croft to Holt’s track record of terrible policing. Holt attacked Croft, who was already in custody, after he refused to take off one of the two pairs of pants he had on. After the incident, Croft was taken to the hospital to treat the facial injury he sustained. A woman who answered Croft's phone and said she was his girlfriend said he had bruising on his face from the incident. The woman would not provide her name.

The day after a deadly police shooting in Boston, officials from the police department showed a surveillance video of the incident to a small group of handpicked community members during a closed-door meeting. Usaama Rahim, 26, died on Tuesday after a Boston police officer and FBI agent opened fire on him outside of a CVS in the Roslindale neighborhood.

During a press conference after yesterday's meeting, Boston police commissioner William Evans said that five members of the FBI and Boston Police Department approached Rahim to question him and were forced to shoot after he came at them with a knife. Evans said Rahim was hit three times.

On Tuesday, April 14, a man was grabbed and detained by police in Lawrence who were trying to stop him from exercising his First Amendment right to record them in public. John Carattini was walking down a street when he spotted three people seemingly being detained by two plainclothes police officers. He began recording with his camera and walked past them, giving no indication that he planned to stick around and continue recording. After passing the officers, one of them called out to him and ordered him to come back.

The officer asked if Carattini was recording them and demanded that he turn over his camera as “evidence” (according to the Department of Justice, police generally need a warrant to seize a camera as evidence). The police officer then immediately escalated the situation by grabbing the camera.

The Supervisor of Records ripped a giant new hole in the records law by refusing to have the law enforced when the MBTA Transit Police illegally destroyed a video because “there are no other responsive records available.”

Broken Records is a column about public records access in Massachusetts. In this, our first, column we explore William Galvin's role in making a mess out of Massachusetts records access, and we discuss the push to to reform the law. We also look at the recent Boston Globe survey of town responses to records requests that found that Massachusetts is failing, which is exactly what all the other surveys found.

Chicopee Associate Solicitor, Thomas Rooke, uses a personal email account to dodge records requests. He then avoided complying with an order from Secretary of the Commonwealth William Galvin's office by applying for an extension even though those don't exist in the law (yet).

The saga of George Thompson, the Fall River man who was arrested for recording a police officer, is emblematic of America's tiered justice system, where ordinary people are punished just for exercising their rights, but powerful people like police officers face no repercussions whatsoever even when the brazenly break the law.

George Thompson was arrested by Fall River police officer Thomas Barboza in January, 2014 after he used his iPhone to record the officer even though recording police is protected by the First Amendment. While Thompson was still facing wiretapping and resisting arrest charges, a police department employee wiped his phone, destroying the video and all other data on it. The police department tried to blame Thompson for deleting the video, claiming without evidence that he might have used a cloud service to do it, until a company they hired to examine the phone determined a police employee had done it.